Chapter 3: On human monstrosities

1. Portents, Varro says, are those births which seem to have taken place contrary to nature. But they are not contrary to nature, because they come by the divine will, since the will of the creator is the nature of each thing that is created. Whence, too, the heathen themselves call God now nature, now God.

2. A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to known nature....

4. Certain creations of portents seem to have been made with future meanings. For God sometimes wishes to indicate what is to come by disgusting features at birth, as also by dreams and oracles, that he may give forewarning by these, and indicate to certain nations or certain men coming destruction. This has been proved by many trials.

5. ... But these portents which are sent in warning, do not live long, but die as soon as they are born.

12. And just as there are monstrous individuals in separate races of men, so in the whole human kind there are certain monstrous races, as the Gigantes, Cynocephali, Cyclopes, and the rest.

15. The Cynocephali are so called because they have dogs’ heads and their very barking betrays them as beasts rather than men. These are born in India.

16. The Cyclopes, too, the same India gives birth to, and they are named Cyclopes because they are said to have a single eye in the midst of the forehead. These have the additional name ἀγριοφαγίται because they eat nothing but the flesh of wild beasts.

17. The Blemmyes, born in Libya, are believed to be headless trunks, having mouth and eyes in the breast; others are born without necks, with eyes in their shoulders.

18. In the remote east, races with faces of a monstrous sort are described. Some without noses, with formless countenances; others with lower lip so protruding that by it they shelter the whole face from the heat of the sun while they sleep; others have small mouths, and take sustenance through a narrow opening by means of oat-straws; a good many are said to be tongueless, using nod or gesture in place of words.

19. They say the Panotii in Scythia have ears of so large a size that they cover the whole body with them. For πᾶν in Greek means all, and ὦτα, ears.

21. The Satyrs are manikins with upturned noses; they have horns on their foreheads, and are goat-footed, such as the one St. Anthony saw in the desert. And he, being questioned, is said to have answered the servant of God, saying, “I am mortal, one of the inhabitants of the waste, whom the heathen, misled by error, worship as the Fauns and Satyrs.”

23. The race of the Sciopodes is said to live in Ethiopia. They have one leg apiece, and are of a marvelous swiftness, and the Greeks call them Sciopodes from this, that in summertime they lie on the ground on their backs and are shaded by the greatness of their feet.

24. The Antipodes in Libya have feet turned backward and eight toes on each foot.

28. Other fabulous monstrosities of the human race are said to exist, but they do not; they are imaginary. And their meaning is found in the causes of things, as Geryon, King of Spain, who is said to have had a triple form. For there were three brothers of such harmonious spirit that it was, as it were, one soul in three bodies.

Chapter 4. On transformations to beasts.

2. Moreover they affirm with no fabulous lying but with historic proof, that Diomedes’ companions were changed to birds. And certain say that witches are created from human beings. For the shapes of the wicked change for their many villanies, and they turn bodily into beasts, whether by magic charms or by the use of herbs.

3. Many creatures go through a natural change and by decay pass into different forms, as bees [are formed] by the decaying flesh of calves, as beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs.